Ham-Nye Debate: Another False Choice

"There are two fundamentally different battles raging in the current debates about evolution. The first pits nearly the entire scientific community against creationists, who believe that they are upholding the veracity of Scripture by denying that evolution happened at all. The second battle concerns not the fact of evolution but the standard neo-Darwinian explanation of it, and the issues at stake are primarily philosophical and scientific."--American physicist Stephen M. Barr


Alice C. Linsley

I did not watch the Ken Ham-Bill Nye debate because it was bound to get my blood pressure up. My students wanted to talk about it on Wednesday and gave me the details and their opinions. Listening to their descriptions, I was reminded of the story of the elephant and the blind men. At least Nye touched the beast.

Both men failed to address the deeper questions surrounding evolution. Ham is ignorant of the science. He only knows to respond with the YEC talking points. Nye did not distinguish between the aspects of evolution that are absolutely factual with substantial physical and genetic evidence and the aspects that are theoretical still lacking substantial physical evidence. In other words, the public is no more enlightened on mutation, adaptation, common ancestry and natural selection than before the debate. Again, we were faced with a false choice between biblical illiteracy and biblical literalism.

That's all I have to say on the subject. For those who wish to read more I recommend (but do not necessarily agree with) these responses:

A Ken Ham Nightmare: Human Foot Prints Found Below Ice Age Deposits

Ken Ham Does Not Speak For Me
Faith and Science: A dialogue, not a debate (Conversation with Ian Barbour)
The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity
BioLogos Conversation: Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye
#HamOnNye Post-Debate Round-Up
On Gaps and Overlaps


Related reading: Smoking Gun Evidence of an Ancient Earth; Is Scientific Dating of Fossils Reliable?; YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Objections to the Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis 1-5; Biblical Anthropology is Science; The Battle Over Genesis; The "Science Guy" Reveals His Ignorance; Millions of Years a Stumbling Block; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; Science Journalists One Cause of Americans' Ambivalence?; Bishop Ussher Goofed

What Do Young Earth Creationists Fear?

The NATURAL HISTORIAN on Ken Ham's Blog in which Ham shares a Letter from a "Concerned Church Member"

This week, on his blog, Ken Ham shared a letter (Chicago church compromiser) sent to him from a concerned church member about his churches hiring of a non 6 day creation pastor especially in light of their creationist history. In that letter the author recounts a discussion with the pastor and includes this comment:

“The Lost World of Genesis One” by John Walton

He then handed me a book to read written by John Walton who is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois.  The book entitled “The Lost World of Genesis”  claims that by studying  ancient Near Eastern cultures we are able, for the first time, to know what God was trying to tell us in Genesis and what it all means.  I politely left the book on his desk when I left.

He then states that he searched from reviews about the book and makes some rather distorted statements about Walton’s conclusions. He criticizes the pastor for not being able to support his position but then when he is given a book he leaves it behind. This is exactly what Ken Ham wants his followers to do – not to even give the other side a hearing. I’m not sure that Walton’s book would be the best choice but a full appreciation for the issues involved in the creation debate is not suited for short discussion. Reading several books is necessary to get a fuller understanding of the issues. This author admits that the creation science literature have answered all his questions. Ham constantly warns against listening to any compromiser and so the reaction by YECs is often to simply rely on the reviews of books like this by Ham himself to get the “other” side. I expect this author has also heard a creation seminar in which the salty sea was provided as a scientific evidence for a young earth. He will never read Davis Young’s book or 20 other Christian scientists books, or my blog, that refute that argument because we are labeled compromisers. As I state in my first part of my salt series, there is a confidence bias at work and this person is demonstrating how effectively it can be by simply only listening to once source and dismissing all others out of hand.

Read more here.

Alice C. Linsley

Why do Young Earthers run away from discussions of the cultural-historical context of Biblical texts? Why should they fear that the Bible emerges from a specific cultural context?  Will facing the evidence cause them a crisis of confidence in the Bible's authority? Doesn't this reveal a lack of confidence in the truth of Scripture?

If the Bible is true, it will stand up to the most stringent analysis. This writer is dedicated to demonstrating the veracity of the Bible through an anthropological approach. Today people want to know that there are solid scientific reasons to take the Biblical texts seriously. This is the time in which we live.

Young Earth Creationism is destined to fade away because the younger generation thinks empirically and rationally about the Bible. Under leaders like Ken Ham, YEC fails to explore the Bible scientifically and imposes quasi-science that misrepresents what the Bible makes clear. Their condensing of Earth's history to 6000 years based on Bishop Ussher's miscalculations is an artifact of historical interest, but not a Biblical position. People should be shown that the Biblical timeline is fully supported by the sciences.

Perhaps Young Earth Creationists recognize that a serious investigation of the cultural-historical context of the Bible will tilt their worldview so drastically that they will never recover their comfortable interpretations. They will have to recognize the Nilotic and Proto-Saharan context of Genesis and that the people listed in Genesis 4 and 5 were rulers, not the only people on earth. They are the first of the rulers than can be traced from Eden to Jesus. To neglect this means missing how it is that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is about one thing: Jesus Christ.

In holding to their idol of Young Earth Creationism, fundamentalists will also misunderstand the wisdom literature that reflects Horite beliefs. They will neglect that Abraham's ancestors were Kushites, and that Abraham was Ha-piru, not a Jew. They will fail to see the profound historical implications of Jesus Christ as a direct descendant of Cain, Seth, Ham and Shem because their lines intermarried. Yes, that means that Cain's line survived the Flood. Noah was one of his ruler-priest descendants. Tilt! Tilt! Tilt!

Related reading:  YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; Biblical Anthropology is Science, Why Prejudice Against a Scientific Approach to the Bible?; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Objections to a Fundamentalist Reading of Genesis; The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's People; The Lamech Segment Analysis; This Gets My Blood Pressure Up!